Tag Archives: Leicester

Review – The Same Faces at the Black Prince, Northampton, 24th September 2016

Posted on by

If you are one of my more astute and faithful readers, you may remember that we saw the Oxford Imps at the Edinburgh Fringe this summer and that that was our first foray into the potentially dangerous world of improvised comedy. I’m not sure why improv had never really appealed much to us; I think it’s to do with the fact that whilst everyone was raving about Channel 4’s Whose Line Is It Anyway, Mrs Chrisparkle and I watched it once and found it a rather irritating and self-indulgent programme. I know – imagine our cheek. However, age must be softening our sharp edges, and, having thought that those little Imps were a lot of fun, for the second time this year we found ourselves in front of a team of comedy improvisers and with not a clue as to what to expect.

The Same Faces are based in Leicester but once a month venture down south to God’s Own County, where their regular stage is at the back of the Black Prince on Kettering Road in Northampton. It’s a very good venue – a friendly pub with a good range of drinks at reasonable prices – and the back room is absolutely perfect for the task. There was a good turn out last Saturday, with the number of people arriving exceeding the number of chairs. So that’s either a good thing, or a bad thing, depending on your point of view (particularly if you hoped to sit down!) It’s also only a fiver to get in if you book in advance (£7 if you don’t) so that’s incredible value for over 2 hours of entertainment.

The group’s line-up changes from show to show, but for last Saturday’s extravaganza we had Boss Man Tom Young, regular Dave Gotheridge, and semi-regulars Jen Kenny, Ryan Vernal and Jaz Cox. They each bring their different gifts to the performance; some are a bit more quick-thinking on their feet than others, some have a more natural authority than others, some are more eccentric than others – stir all that into one melting pot of talent and you’re going to get a totally different show every time. Especially as it is, of course, the audience who give the performers the subjects that they are going to be dealing with.

As I’ve only seen the one show, I don’t know to what extent the “games” that the group play change from month to month; I sense they don’t change that much, what changes is the line-up and the subjects. I’ll not be able to remember all the games from Saturday night – and me just spouting a list won’t be that interesting to you, gentle reader – but some of them leap to mind, for what will become obvious reasons as we go on…

Two of my favourite games in the first half were “Party Quirks”, where one member of the team was holding a party and the four guests all had some kind of quirk about them, which had been suggested by the audience whilst the party host was out of the room. When he returned and they enacted out the party, he had to guess which particular problem each of his guests had. Jen was given “God Complex”, which gave rise to some nicely patronising behaviour, and Dave had to channel his inner Russian because his quirk was that he was unable to say the word “the”. The other excellent game was where Jen was a barmaid and each of her customers had a particular problem that they had to sing to her about, and then she had to sing each of them in turn a solution for their problem. Who knew mice in the skirting board could be so melodious?

But it was in the second half where things got considerably more hysterical. I really enjoyed the game where Jen and Dave had to advertise a new album on a subject given by a member of the audience: this week, Firefighters. So they had to create some excellent ideas for the other team members to sing; perhaps most memorably, the ever charming and deeply emotional smash hit, Shiny Helmet. And there was a mannequin game where Tom chose two members of the audience to come on stage; each had to prompt one member of the group into movement by tapping them on whichever part of the body they wanted them to move. One of these two hapless members of the public was Mrs C. I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t following the instructions at all, and so once the game began she instantly started making a mess of it. Eventually she got the hang of it, but instructing others on which limbs to use doesn’t really count as one of her personal strengths. Absolutely hilarious.

The Same Faces perform at the Black Prince on the final Saturday of every month, so if you fancy supporting a new local comedy venture, I’d really recommend it! Unfortunately, I don’t think we can make any more this year, but we will certainly be back for more in a few months’ time!

Review – Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Curve Theatre, Leicester, 5th March 2016

Posted on by

There are few more iconic images in 20th century culture than that of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in the film of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Sexy, cute; the ridiculously long cigarette holder adding a touch of posy extravagance; cosseting her pussycat to show that she’s kind to animals too. Delicately unreal; almost – but not quite – attainable; forever to escape labelling or compartmentalising; teasingly aloof; charmingly kooky. It’s a character that should be full of life and extremes; full of light and shade. Funny and tragic. Confident and timid. Gazing vacantly one minute, then teeming with motivation the next. You can get all that from the poster. We’ve never read the book, and we’ve never seen the film. We saw the Lost Musical of Holly Golightly a few years ago, and looking back I remember it was a rather unsatisfactory experience, neither giving us a decent insight into the character of Holly Golightly nor telling a good story, lacking, as it was, in both drama and substance. Surely, this new full length play adaptation of Truman Capote’s original book will fill in the gaps.

The story is somewhat slight. Holly lives in a brownstone apartment in New York, with no discernible job nor way of funding her lifestyle. She’s totally unpredictable, sometimes going away for weeks on end, unannounced; often in the company of more mature men and other insalubrious companions. She clearly likes a good party; she allows her neighbour to get part way into her life but she still keeps him at a certain distance. In the end, she suffers a downfall in fortune, loses an unborn child but follows her heart by escaping to Brazil. I was struck by the many similarities with Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby; a charismatic, extravagant but elusive central character; a slightly misfit narrator commenting on the side of the action; scenes of New York excessiveness; and ending up with shattered dreams.

I should point out that Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw the third (I think?) public performance of this production which still counted as a preview, so it was definitely still bedding in and maybe there was still some scope to make a few tweaks here and there before press night. But let’s first look at the ingredients that make up this production. The adaptation is by Richard Greenberg, an experienced American author who won the Tony Award for best play in 2003 for Take Me Out, and who also adapted Strindberg’s Dance of Death to critical acclaim. It’s directed by Nikolai Foster, Artistic Director of the Curve, who last year gave us two stunning productions with Beautiful Thing and A Streetcar Named Desire – he also directed Jodie Prenger in the fun revival of Calamity Jane. The enjoyably detailed set is by Matthew Wright, whose work at the Menier is a series of delights; he also designed the eye-catching costumes, and Miss Golightly obviously makes it a rule never to be seen in the same outfit twice. The original music is by Grant Olding, he who gave us the tunes in One Man Two Guvnors, and created the stunning Drunk with Drew McOnie. Heading the cast you have Pixie Lott, with three number one singles under her belt, nominated for four BRIT awards, quarter finalist on Strictly Come Dancing, and having sold 1.6 million albums worldwide. What could possibly go wrong?

I’ll tell you. A complete lack of energy, and a total lack of drama. It’s almost paralysingly dull. Mrs C had to check Wikipedia when we got home in order to verify what kind of story it’s meant to be – and the answer seemed to be romantic comedy. Well there’s not a lot of romance, and even less comedy. I’ve hardly ever seen such a packed audience (and believe me the Curve Theatre was absolutely packed) react so quietly to a play. And it’s not that “I could hear a pin drop” type of intense quietness; it’s the aghast quietness that says “I can’t believe I paid £38 to see something so totally bland”. It’s almost as though after the first couple of scenes we had united in a communal “glazing over” of all our senses. I think I gave a slight chuckle three times in the entire show. You could tell the lines that were meant to get laughs, as the cast had built in useful pauses in the proceedings to deal with them. However, they were met with silence. I almost wondered if we had gone on a work to rule and weren’t going to react to any of the lines until our demands for free half-time ice-creams had been met. Desultory applause at the interval and curtain call told its own story. Yes, there were of course some whoops for Miss Lott, but they were clearly out of appreciation for her back catalogue rather than anything to do with her performance.

Fair’s fair – Pixie Lott absolutely looks the part. She’s radiant, she’s stylish; you’d have to be a very hard-hearted chap not to get some warmth in your soul from looking at her. In the course of the show she sings three songs: Grant Olding’s Hold Up My Dying Day which I thought was a very classy number, Oklahoma’s People will say we’re in love which just seems The Wrong Song from The Wrong Show at The Wrong Time, and Henry Mancini’s Moon River, in a version so laid back that it can barely stand upright. This is patently not a musical – it’s a play with music. I thought it was very revealing that a packed house watching Pixie Lott perform three songs on stage only resulted in one very half-hearted round of applause – for Moon River, when you could sense the audience guiltily relent into it as though it were a kind of obligation. With looks like that she doesn’t have to be the world’s finest actor but I couldn’t help but feel that she hadn’t really got into the part at all yet. It felt much more like she was doing a vocal impersonation of Audrey Hepburn – or, actually, to me it sounded more like she was channelling her inner Zsa Zsa Gabor, darrrlink.

Matt Barber played Holly’s neighbour Fred – although that isn’t his name – and again I didn’t really get a full impression about how he actually felt about Holly. The character’s ambiguous sexuality was quite subtly played out in many scenes, with his more than usual delight at meeting Jose, his looking twice at the sailors home on leave and the initial suggestion that Doc was stalking him for a very different purpose. But I couldn’t work out if that made him Holly’s Gay Best Friend or what, really. Many of the other characters succeeded in featuring somewhere on the irritating scale, with some rather over the top performances; maybe they were just trying to compensate for the overwhelming dullness of the whole thing by goofying-up these minor characters. Mrs C’s main criticism of the show – during the parts where she stayed awake – was that a lot of the acting was very shouty – one of her pet hates. Only Robert Calvert as Doc – Holly’s rather sad and confused husband from the early days – struck me as getting the tone of his character right. They say never work with animals – couldn’t agree less. The cat was one of the best things about this show.

I really wanted to enjoy it; I so wanted to enjoy it. But in the first few scenes it offers the audience nothing to latch on to that can carry them through the rest of the play. No intrigue; no humour; no suspense; no characters with whom you can identify or admire. It ends up being two and a half hours (or more) of supreme irrelevance. I couldn’t wait for it to end.

Review – A Streetcar Named Desire, Leicester Curve Studio, 24th October 2015

Posted on by

I’ve been an admirer of the plays of Tennessee Williams for as long as I can remember. I recall being blown away by a TV adaptation of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof when I was about 16, then I took a young lady to see The Glass Menagerie when I was 17 (what a romantic gesture that was!) and the only other time I’ve seen A Streetcar Named Desire was at the Oxford Playhouse back in 1978, directed by Nicolas Kent. So it was high time I got reacquainted with the play. Mrs Chrisparkle had also never seen it, nor had our friend, Lady Lichfield, who struggled up to Leicester by train on the most circuitous of routes, but that’s another story.

I had forgotten what a simply magnificent play this is. It is so beautifully written, creating an uncertain air of mystery with almost every new plot progression, that you, as an audience member, can interpret it in many different ways. These basic plot details are for certain: Blanche Dubois has come to visit her sister Stella who lives in a dingy downstairs flat in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Blanche seems used to a more refined lifestyle, dressing in lace and assuming an almost unnatural politesse. Stella, however, has married Stanley, an uncultured Polack (Blanche’s word), and appears content to live with (indeed emotionally and sexually satisfied by) his violent and brutish behaviour. The Grand Estate – Belle Reve – where Blanche and Stella were brought up has been “lost”, and Blanche is now homeless. Stella hasn’t forewarned Stanley that his sister-in-law is coming to stay, and it’s fair to say that they don’t hit it off. In the following months, Blanche gets courted by one of Stanley’s poker-playing buddies, Mitch, who’s less Neanderthal than the rest of them; but her past catches up with her and none of it ends happily. I could go into more detail about the plot but a) you probably know it already, b) maybe you don’t want to know it, and c) there’s a fine line between what you see on stage and what might just be figments of Blanche’s imagination. Although Blanche is taken away by a doctor and nurse at the end of the play, it’s debatable at which point her mental instability takes control. It could be at the end of the play, it could be much earlier; and what you see may be a hazy blend of reality and fantasy. That’s just part of the play’s mystery.

It was first produced in 1947 and had its first UK production in 1949, directed by Laurence Olivier and with Vivien Leigh as Blanche. Of course, back in those days, drama was censored on the British stage and the producer had to apply to the Lord Chamberlain’s office for a licence to perform. This must have provided more than a few difficulties for the censor, as the play deals with – amongst other things – insanity, victim mentality, suicide, rape, and paedophilia. But none of this was, apparently, a particular problem. The only thing that almost caused the production to be banned at the last minute was the story about Blanche’s late husband Allan, whom she found in flagrante delicto with someone else: “Then I found out. In the worst of all possible ways. By coming suddenly into a room that I thought was empty – which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it…the boy I had married and an older man who had been his friend for years”. For the censor, this was the bridge too far. The reference to homosexuality had to go. Bizarrely, the censor himself suggested it should be replaced so that Allan should have been caught at it with a black woman. Eventually a cut was agreed, with the line now just reading “which wasn’t empty, but had two people in it…” And that is how it reads in my Penguin edition of the play and how it is currently spoken in this Curve production. Oddly, by not spelling out precisely what it was that Blanche saw her husband doing, it actually adds to the play’s overall air of mystery.

I had read some very disappointing reviews of this production after press night – none of which are remotely recognisable to the show we saw on Saturday – so I can only assume that the team have continued to work on earlier criticisms, because we all thought the show was quite brilliant. Michael Taylor’s set cleverly encompasses the several acting areas of the play – the Kowalskis’ two roomed apartment, the bathroom, the porch area, Eunice’s flat upstairs, even the streets around New Orleans. There’s a very realistic rain effect right at the end of the play that might get your knees and legs wet if you sit in the front row (as we did, but it’s great to be almost part of the action). There are lots of off-stage music effects that confront and unsettle you, the emotionally moving image of the flower vendor selling her flores para los muertos, and, of course, there are some magnificent performances.

The character of Blanche is so central and so iconic that it is vital to get it right – and Charlie Brooks gives us a terrifyingly stressed Blanche; jittery, anxious, and clearly disturbed right from the start. Mrs C and Lady L both thought that her characterisation made the first act rather frenetic – you were constantly being so bombarded by her words and her anxieties that you hardly had time to reflect. I think that’s possibly true – but I also think it’s entirely justified. In fact, I found it virtually impossible to take my eyes off Ms Brooks all the time she was on stage, so vividly and profoundly did she inhabit the character. I thought it was an amazing performance. We’d seen her a few months earlier in Beautiful Thing and she was terrific in that too – she’s not putting a foot wrong at the moment.

Her anxiety makes the perfect contrast with Dakota Blue Richards’ portrayal of Stella – calm, collected, accepting, practical, and surprisingly assertive. When Blanche tries to load the emotional blackmail on her she simply rejects it; when Stanley behaves badly to her sister she remonstrates with him. Nevertheless, she’s no match for Stanley’s brute force, and the simplicity of her return to him after he’s assaulted her speaks volumes about what she wants from life – and we the audience watch disapprovingly at her contentment with her victim status. Ms Richards gives us a Stella of great clarity and warmth; and turmoil too, when she wonders if she has done the right thing by bringing the doctor to Blanche. That was the moment when both Mrs C and Lady L reached for the Kleenex.

There’s also a wild and brilliant portrayal of Stanley by Stewart Clarke; loud, cruel, calculating, and intimidating – a really strong and intense performance, never straying into an over-the-top pantomime, but always unpleasantly believable. There are also some great supporting performances from Sandy Foster as Eunice, and Patrick Knowles as Mitch,both caught up in an environment where survival of the fittest and not rocking the boat is an imperative, even if you have to do things of which you are not proud.

A stunning production of what is still a very moving and important play – one of those theatre experiences that will live on long after you come home. It’s on at the Curve until 7th November – strongly recommended!

Production photographs by Manuel Harlan

Review – Beautiful Thing, Leicester Curve Studio, 30th May 2015

Posted on by

At the risk of repeating myself, gentle reader, back in the Dark Ages I undertook postgrad research into the effects of the withdrawal of stage censorship, and, as a result, potentially censorable (or just plain naughty) plays have always held a certain fascination for me. That was one of the reasons I wanted to see Jonathan Harvey’s Beautiful Thing. If it had been produced in the mid-1960s it would most certainly have been censored – although primarily, I think, for its frequent use of the C word. However, the play first saw the light of day in 1993 and by 1994 was winning awards in the West End, long after the abolition of censorship. Just as that was a very different time from the 60s, it’s also a very different time from today. I can’t imagine nowadays a repeat of the incident that apparently happened in 1994 where a local councillor from Bexley went to see it at the Duke of York’s then left after twenty minutes, saying it was misleading to call it a comedy, that they were intimidated by gays in the bar and that it was sickening to see older and younger homosexuals in public together. Three different eras indeed.

But the themes of the play are timeless. Bullying, self-discovery, addiction, and above all, young love; creating a beautiful thing out of a wasteland. 15 year old Jamie lives with his barmaid/pub-managing mum Sandra who rules the roost as any good pub landlady would. When the play opens she is furiously ditching all his childhood games and ephemera as a punishment for his continually bunking off sports afternoon at school. A slightly misleading start, actually, because, as you know in advance that it’s a play about two boys falling in love,I wondered if this was her initial reaction to discovering her son was gay. But no, it’s not; that discovery comes much later. In a close-knit, working-class community, Jamie’s neighbours are 16 year old Ste, very much his opposite as you can’t keep him off the sports field, but whereas Sandra is an essentially loving parent (although you can’t always tell), Ste’s father is an abusive alcoholic and his family basically treat him as their laundry slave, merrily assaulting him just for the hell of it. Jamie’s other neighbour is Leah, expelled from school for drug-taking and other misdemeanours, who whiles away her hours listening to Mama Cass.

When Ste runs to Sandra for shelter whilst his father’s on a drunken rampage, she insists Ste stays overnight and thus Ste and Jamie end up sleeping top-to-tail in Jamie’s bedroom. When Ste returns a second time, bearing the bruises on his back where he’s been beaten up, he stays in Jamie’s room again, but this time Jamie convinces him to go from top-to-tail to top-to-top, as it were. And that’s how their relationship starts, and the rest of the play covers how they deal with it (Ste is very uncomfortable about it at first), how Sandra finds out, and how they all come to terms with their new situation. At the risk of using the J-word, all the characters undergo their own journey, and over the course of the two hours, nothing stays the same – That’s What I Call Drama. And, joy of joys, it even has a happy ending, with Jamie and Ste dancing together with full glitterball effect, and with a positive eye to the future. Although we always suspected it would end happily – the show starts to the sound of Mama Cass singing “It’s Getting Better”, and you can’t get much more positive than that.

It’s a beautifully written, smartly crafted play, with some really meaty characters for the actors to get their teeth into, and this honest and straightforward co-production between the Nottingham Playhouse and the Leicester Curve did it proud. Sadly, you can’t go and see it anymore, as the last three dates on the tour – to London’s Arts Theatre, Cardiff and Brighton – have been pulled due to lack of ticket sales earlier on in the run. As they said in Blood Brothers, an unfortunate sign of the times, Miss Jones. So I’m very pleased we snuck in to see the last matinee, at one of my favourite venues, the Studio at the Curve. For an intimate theatre it has a relatively large stage, so you can put on a full scale show whilst retaining a cosiness that’s lost in the main theatre.

Colin Richmond’s set is usefully shabby and conjures up the relative poverty of the environment without ever going over the top. There’s a very nice contrast between the well-worn old baby bike that’s always left outside, on which Jamie and Leah like to play (emphasising their youth) and the aspirational, quality, hanging baskets that decorate Sandra’s front door, which she guards with her life. And one of the stars of the show is Jamie’s bed, magically appearing from below with a simple unrolling of a blanket and sheet – very deftly done. Mr Richmond’s costumes are also very well chosen, with some delightfully tarty dresses for Sandra, Ste’s too-big sports t-shirt (no doubt, he’ll grow into it), and an outlandish creation for Leah when she’s on her bad trip.

But it’s the performances that really make this play work. Central to the whole show is a fantastic performance by Charlie Brooks as Sandra. Strong, outspoken and determined from the start, she lays down the law (or tries to) right from the start, with a cunning blend of heart of gold and utter bitch. Protective towards her boy but definitely into living life to the full and for herself, it’s a really convincing portrayal of someone who has to work very hard, wants to provide a good life for her family, has a sense of fun but is also pretty ruthless with it. Not being a soap watcher, Miss Brooks is new to us, but she’s got an amazing stage presence and gave a walloping good performance.

She is matched by two other superb performances from the actors playing Jamie and Ste. Jamie is played by Sam Jackson with quiet confidence and growing charisma, as he develops from awkward little boy to proud young man. Thomas Law as Ste gives a stunning mature performance, as he wrestles with the character’s internal emotions and sexual needs; a boy with a man’s problems. The two actors portray Jamie and Ste’s relationship with great tenderness and integrity, creating a very moving account of first love. Not to say it doesn’t have its humour too; at a moment of early intimacy where Ste is laying down on his front and Jamie is rubbing peppermint cream into the bruises on his back, and you think something significant may just be about to happen, Ste hurriedly dismisses Jamie’s invitation to turn over for further treatment presumably in order to stifle a hidden erection in the sheets. Very nicely done. There’s also excellent support from Vanessa Babirye as the troublesome but troubled Leah and Gerard McCarthy as Sandra’s latest flame Tony, propelled into resolving all sorts of family difficulties when all he was hoping for was a few decent shags.

My only quibble with it – and I’m not sure if it’s a problem of the play or the production – is that I didn’t get a sense of the timespan involved. I couldn’t work out if it all happens over a few days or a couple of years. Certainly the boys are 15 and 16 when they start their relationship – but by the end of the play they are regulars at the gay pub, Sandra’s career is on the upturn, Leah seems to be taking steps to improve her life and Tony has gone from hero to zero. It would make more sense (in my head at least) if the story was set over a reasonably prolonged period – but neither visually nor in the text (I think) was there anything to give us that clue.

The performance received a hugely warm reception from the audience in the Studio and, even if it wasn’t a commercial success, artistically and emotionally this will have touched hearts and broken down barriers. A funny and warm play, superbly performed.

Review – Oh What A Lovely War! Curve Theatre, Leicester, 18th April 2015

Posted on by

The words “Oh What a Lovely War”, “Theatre Royal Stratford East” and “Joan Littlewood” are inextricably linked, and have had almost legendary status within British 20th century drama ever since the show first appeared in 1963. It was originally a radio play by Charles Chilton, which was then developed by Joan Littlewood in conjunction with the whole of the original Theatre Workshop cast, to create this iconic, epic musical, telling the story of World War One through song and dance. The show was another on my bucket list of Still haven’t seen it after all these years and it’s about time I did. There is a film, that I also haven’t seen, directed by Richard Attenborough, that Joan Littlewood, apparently, hated. I’m not surprised – he ruined A Chorus Line too.

The highly stylised production gets as far away from the typical depiction of war as possible – Joan Littlewood didn’t want it to be horrific in any way. Instead the notion of war and the hard facts of fatalities are juxtaposed with a music hall and commedia dell’arte presentation to create its own, telling, anti-war story. Every barrier is broken down in this production. It starts off with the actors mingling with the audience, chatting about the performance they are about to see. Sadly no one mingled with us, but I overheard one performer explaining that he was wearing a pierrot costume as was traditionally worn in early 20th century revue shows, and as was used in the original Stratford East production. I saw another talking to an audience member and pointing out which one he was in the programme. So you’re starting with a great sense of equality between the cast and the audience, a level playing field where we’re all sharing the same experience, no matter whether we be audience member or performer.

There is a main MC who addresses the audience throughout the entire show apart from when he takes on a few different characters. He introduces us to the different songs and sketches as though this were some Edwardian end of the pier show – hence the suitability of the pierrot costumes. He encourages us to sing along with the songs if we know them. The majority of the under-lubricated matinee audience weren’t up for that, apart from the man two to my right who bellowed his way solo throughout much of the afternoon. You would have thought self-consciousness would kick in at some point, wouldn’t you? Cast members rush on and off the stage at odd moments and 90% of the material is extremely light-hearted. Act One takes us to the beginning of the war, with actors assuming the roles of nations having agreements and arguments in the lead-up to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. It reminded me of a rather trendy history teacher getting the kids up in front of the class to act out war campaigns. I almost expected to see a blackboard rubber representing the Treaty of Versailles. We then see the early stages of the war, and the expectation it would all be over by Christmas. The act culminates in the famous 1914 Christmas trench scene, with the Germans singing Stille Nacht and Tommy and Fritz playing football in No Man’s Land – simply but very effectively staged.

Act Two takes us further into the war, where the innocent pleasure of enjoying light-hearted entertainment is constantly shattered by an electronic newsreel across the back of the stage, recounting the numbers dead or injured on individual days or at particular battlefields. Every so often you take your eyes of the performers just to read the horrendous casualty statistics. They bring the simple lightness of the stagey songs and dances into perspective. The audience questions itself as to how it reacts. How can we fritter away our time whilst they’re dying on the Somme? But there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And, actually, isn’t having fun what life really should be all about? Guilt, resignation, and powerlessness are just some of the emotions that overcome the audience. And, as the MC points out at the end, that this doesn’t only apply to World War One. When will the massacre of innocent people in war end? Will it ever end? Sadly the evidence suggests otherwise. The show is still a really forceful weapon in the argument against war, and Littlewood’s and Theatre Workshop’s left-wing bias stands out (refreshingly, in my opinion).

Ever since the BBC dropped The Good Old Days, you don’t get to hear these old songs as often as we used to – in the good old days, in fact. Songs like It’s A Long Way to Tipperary, Pack Up Your Troubles and Keep the Home Fires Burning remain wartime standards; whilst Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts and I’ll Make a Man of You recollect the best music-hall traditions. A couple – Here Comes a Whizzbang, and Bells of Hell stop you dead in your tracks with the sheer horror of what they convey, and one, I Don’t Want to Be a Soldier, brings a lump to your throat with the soldier’s simple plea for the return of his old life. On a personal note, it was lovely to hear Roses in Picardy again, as it was a favourite of the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle, and I used to enjoy playing it on the piano when I were a lad.

It’s an excellent cast who work together really well as an ensemble, both as pierrot entertainers and in their individual character sketches. Ian Reddington takes on the role of the MC with a likeable blend of cheek and cheese, plenty of knowing looks to the audience, but also full of portent when it comes to the gloomy prospects for the future. I really enjoyed him in the stupid but very funny sketch about the unintelligible sergeant barking garbled waffle at his troops. Taking the lead female role is Wendi Peters, larger than life and with a belter of a voice. In fact, if anything, her voice was a little too loud in comparison with everyone else. She’s one of these performers who simply doesn’t need amplifying. She brought out all the naughty music hall double entendres in her songs and has a wonderful stage presence. But all the cast are excellent; if you come to see the show, watch out for William Oxborrow struggling with an umbrella as a rifle and Alex Giannini’s hilarious “stage fright” moment.

The show is still to visit Aylesbury, Birmingham, Truro, Hull and Wimbledon on its tour, and I’d recommend it for its emotionally strong anti-war vibe as well as its unusual and entertaining no fourth wall qualities. You come away with a sense of true gratitude and humility for the lives lost in war. Despite the preponderance of WW1 songs and clichés, its message is as relevant today as ever.

Review – The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ The Musical, Curve Theatre Leicester, 21st March 2015

Posted on by

I don’t think there can be many lives who haven’t been affected by the character of Adrian Mole in one way or another. I can remember when the original book came out, and the Dowager Mrs Chrisparkle bought it for me as part of my Christmas Present Package. I thought it was brilliant, and over the subsequent years bought and read all of young Mr Mole’s diarised works. The TV series with Julie Walters and Stephen Moore was great too. Moley was one of the author Sue Townsend’s greatest creations, and definitely her most successful. Sue Townsend herself was from Leicester, as is Adrian Mole, and she based his school environment and council estate home on the places where she was educated and lived. So it’s entirely appropriate that The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ The Musical should start life at the Curve in Leicester. Young Adrian would have been so impressed by the artistic and cultural hub that is the Curve.

The original book runs from New Year’s Day 1981 to April 1982 (Mole’s 15th birthday), but the show just takes the full year from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Eve. In that time Adrian charts a painful course as an adolescent falling in love with the blessed Pandora, watching his parents’ marriage fall apart and coping with their new loves, visiting and being used as a slave by old Bert Baxter, getting on with some schoolmates and being bullied by others, habitually writing to the BBC and generally being a typical, angst-ridden teenager. But this isn’t a simple dramatization of the novel – it’s a musical, with book and lyrics by Jake Brunger and music and lyrics by Pippa Cleary, two Bristol University graduates who are starting to carve out a career in the genre. Director Luke Sheppard has brought together a talented team to tell the story of Moley’s early adolescence, and the result is a bright and breezy show with many enjoyable aspects, plenty of drama and some extremely humorous scenes.

Tom Rogers has designed a wonderful set, full of quirky corners and jagged angles, with pencils that pierce the sky like chimneys and with ink blots all over the floor. Tantalising glimpses of Adrian’s diary pages frame the stage and everything appears bright in satisfyingly child-like primary colours. Congratulations, by the way, to the props department for sourcing all those old Skol cans and the Woolworth’s carrier bag. It’s effectively staged with the Moles’ kitchen at the front and their living area/bedroom to the side – that area also doubles up as Bert’s Stalinist living room and the school room is towards the back of the stage. There’s plenty of useful space for acting as well as singing and dancing. A small thing, but I really enjoyed the way the child actors opened the side doors for the rest of the cast to come out on stage for their curtain calls. It looked very stylish and showed that the kids were in charge.

I’d been looking forward to this show for ages, as I was really curious to see whether this story would actually work as a musical. The answer is Almost. The songs do fit very neatly into the plot and they’re tuneful and entertaining if not over-memorable. In the schoolroom scenes, I liked the way the adult actors joined forces with the child actors to create a whole classroom of the little blighters, which gave rise to some very amusing moments where age was juxtaposed with behaviour. The climax scene – so to speak – when Adrian and the other kids stage an alternative School Nativity play, was full of bravado, delightfully outrageous and very funny.

But there was something about the whole show that just didn’t quite click for me. It didn’t really engage me. I didn’t feel much sympathy for many of the characters, which never helps when you’re trying to identify with a show. It hadn’t properly occurred to me before just how unpleasant a character Adrian’s mum Pauline is. I thought Kirsty Hoiles showed just the right amount of sentimental detachment and lack of empathy to make the character of Pauline very credible. As Adrian’s dad George, Neil Ditt turned in a nicely downtrodden and “victim” performance, and I thought his scenes with Adrian, the two guys home alone, were often quite moving. I really enjoyed Cameron Blakely’s creepy seduction techniques as the slimy Mr Lucas from next door, and his scenes where he’s wooing Pauline with his Latin moves were hilarious. You just don’t expect that kind of thing in Leicester.

So it wasn’t the performances (for the most part) that caused (for me) the show not to soar. I think the main problem is that in order to condense the book into a two and a half hour show – with songs – they had to omit so much that you only have the barebones of the story to work with and not a lot of depth of character. Doubling up roles also caused its own problems. Amy Booth-Steel is excellent as Miss Elf and Mrs Lucas, but as Doreen Slater she presents a completely different character from that in the book. Miss Booth-Steel is a fine comely woman, but Adrian always referred to Doreen as “stick-insect” in his diaries, and, with the best will in the world, Miss Booth-Steel is never going to achieve that epithet. There’s also no Queenie for Bert to settle down with, no Singh family, no parents for Pandora, and the story stops before Argentina invades the Falklands.

Adrian himself, in the book, as far as I can remember, wavers between nervous enfant terrible and neurotic sidekick. He’s hypochondriac, hyper-sensitive, self-deludingly confident about his own intellect; he’s patronising, he’s hideously class-oriented; basically, he’s an insufferable little prig. But we recognise our own adolescence in him, so forgive him and laugh along at his mistakes, his foibles and anxieties, as we know that life will iron them all out in the fullness of time. The Brunger and Cleary version of Adrian struck me as being simply far too nice. That’s no criticism of Sebastian Croft, who played Adrian in our performance, who’s an amazing little song and dance man, has wonderful stage presence for someone so young, who enunciated beautifully (it’s a skill, and one to be appreciated), fitted in to the rest of the cast like a dream, and absolutely deserved his very enthusiastic curtain call.

His Pandora was played by Lulu-Mae Pears, splendidly mature compared to Adrian, delicately fluttering into his world and very credibly being the target of the Optimum Girlfriend Award. I’d say Adrian was boxing way above his weight here. The rest of the cast all give very good support; although, unfortunately, there was one actor who, for whatever reason, was considerably below par for our performance. Maybe they weren’t feeling well or maybe they were under-rehearsed; but it’s probably not very fair to make further comment.

So, for some reason, for me this all added up to something less than the sum of its parts. However, the audience enjoyed it and gave it a very good reception, and there was certainly something for everyone to enjoy. Maybe not for purist aficionados of the book, but if you want to see teenage angst set to music, this is a good place to start!

P.S. There’s been a creeping trend (and I don’t mind it) that the programme on sale to accompany the show of your choice is basically the printed text of the play but with some biographical details of the cast. Now I like reading plays, and giving you the text to take home with you can only add to your knowledge and appreciation of what you have seen; plus it works as an excellent memory aid should you wish to revisit it in sometime in the future. However, I did think it was a bit cheeky that the programme for this show is an adapted version – not of the book/libretto of the show as such, but of Sue Townsend’s original novel. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least half the households whose families come to see this show already have a copy. I know that at £5 it’s not an unreasonable price, but I think if you’re going to combine the programme and text into one book, it should at least contain the words of the show you’re seeing!

Review – The Sound of Music, Curve Theatre Leicester, 17th January 2015

Posted on by

Everybody loves The Sound of Music, don’t they? It was a natural choice for us to take our nieces Secret Agent Code November and Special Agent Code Sierra to see a show completely suitable for children. As indeed did the majority of the citizens of Leicester, judging from the number of children who were in Saturday’s matinee audience. All eager for a stage presentation of that sweet, wholesome musical film that generations have grown up with. Of course, the original stage version preceded the film by six years, but we don’t often think about that.

You can smell that crisp, unpolluted Austrian countryside air. The delectable, yet innocent, Julie Andrews teaching children to sing Do-re-Mi. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. High on a hill stood a lonely goatherd. Larks that are learning to pray. It’s the full package. Yes, of course there are Nazis, but you never really get the sense that they’re anything but plastic baddies creating a bit of an exciting chase towards the end of the film.

That used to be my opinion. Then on 9th April 2007 we saw the Palladium production starring Connie How do you solve a problem like Maria Fisher – except that it was one of the performances where Maria was played by Sophie Bould who normally played Liesl – and extremely good she was too. But the most memorable thing about that production was how, about three-quarters of the way through, the Palladium transformed itself into a Nazi rally, with huge swastika banners hurling down from the ceiling throughout the auditorium; and that simple device just took my breath away. It was really scary.

So there is definitely a blend of the sweet and the sour in this show. Mrs Chrisparkle and I once dressed up for a performance of Sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music at the Wycombe Swan. That experience certainly emphasised the sweet side of the story. Mrs C became a less than demure nun and I was a redoubtable, fully-kitted-out German Officer. The best dressed competition was tough for the ladies as the place was awash with nuns of all shapes and sizes. However, us German Officer lads were fewer and farther in between. Only half a dozen or so of us actually got on the stage to be voted on, and I think I was the only one who assumed any sort of character. I based my performance on Bernard Hepton in Colditz, only a bit more vicious. I got loads of boos and hisses. and won a rather lousy CD of cover versions of Sound of Music songs for my pains.

The new production of The Sound of Music at the Leicester Curve – which ended its season on the 17th January – repeated the dream team of the previous year’s Chicago, being directed by Paul Kerryson (his swansong before standing down as Curve Artistic Director) and choreographed by up-and-coming dance genius Drew McOnie. It was a beautiful production, and I’m glad we managed to see it on its final day. Al Parkinson’s sets were stunning, on a grand scale. The severe looking bars that dropped down to represent the hallowed gated cloisters of the Abbey, with coloured lighting coming from imaginary stained glass windows; and the huge painting that appeared to suggest the Reverend Mother’s office gave it a real sense of substance and occasion. The surprisingly natural looking green mountain where Maria first appears, with its big strong trees descending into place made you want to go for a hike; the grandeur of the inside of Captain von Trapp’s villa made you feel like you were worth a million dollars. The Nazi element was also effectively portrayed, with the subtle regular introduction of swastikas on armbands as the show proceeds, and when the von Trapp children are performing at the Kaltzberg Festival there was no escaping our row (E of the stalls) as we had two Nazi “heavies” at either end, observing us closely and making sure we weren’t going to assist in any escape attempt. As if.

Recently a number of otherwise really good musicals have been spoiled by the sound amplification. In some – Calamity Jane, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – it was really hard to hear the words at all because of the over-amplification. Well, all praise to the people twiddling the technical knobs at the Curve because the sound quality in this show was just perfect. The star roles were sung with impeccable exquisiteness anyway; but the overall clarity and purity of the sound throughout the performance was amazing.

Maria was played by Laura Pitt-Pulford, who was a magnificent Irene in the Curve’s Hello Dolly a couple of years ago. It was a faultless performance; the singing, the humour, the warmth, the anguish, were all perfect. Seeing her Maria was like meeting an old friend – there’s a lot you remember from when you last met but since then they’ve got a few new tricks up their sleeve too. By the time she’d finished singing the opening “Sound of Music” theme I had goosebumps everywhere. I loved her relationship with the children – especially Emma Harrold’s Liesl (so much better in this show than in the awful Happy Days) – and her growing relationship with the Captain was very delicately portrayed. Her Ländler dance with him, after which one of the children, Brigitta, tells her that she’s obviously in love her dad, was one of those deep down, genuinely lovely moments.

In the performance we saw, the Captain was played by Mark Inscoe (who normally plays Max, and who we last saw as a villainous Claudius in Hamlet the Musical). His was a very different Captain from any other I’d seen, in that he didn’t come across as particularly tyrannical at first. He didn’t raise his voice in belligerence or strictness; he just liked households to run like a well-oiled machine. In fact he was like one of those very quiet level-headed bosses who you know will handle a crisis well – firmly but fairly. In many respects it’s a much more believable presentation, but it does also mean that his leaving the dark side and becoming nice again isn’t quite so dramatic. This Captain definitely reserves his tough side for dealing with the Nazi sympathisers rather than disobedient children. I very much enjoyed his performance though, including how he doesn’t have much time for his reprehensible pal Max (played on this occasion by Matt Harrop, who warmed into the role during the course of the show) and having a lot of flirtatiousness with the glamorous Frau Schräder, (she’s just a Frau here, she’s a Baroness in the film), played with style and vivacity by Emma Clifford (although Mrs C wasn’t convinced by her accent).

The other outstanding performance was by Susannah van den Berg as the Mother Abbess. Previously we’d seen her in a relatively minor role in Fiddler on the Roof where she was clearly hiding her light under a bushel. Her Mother Abbess is a fantastic creation – balanced, witty and not afraid to be cruel to be kind. When she sang Climb Every Mountain before the interval, those goosebumps came back in droves. A total musical treat. There was also excellent support from Hannah Grace, Rebecca Ridout and Kate Manley as the Sisters with opposing views of how you solve a problem like Maria; an intelligent performance by Jack Wilcox as Rolf who seems kindly enough to Liesl in the superbly staged Sixteen Going on Seventeen, but proves himself a turncoat at the end; and an excellently nasty portrayal of Nazi enthusiast Herr Zeller by Patrick Moy.

And then, of course, there are the children. A captain with seven children…. what’s so fearsome about that? I always enjoy that line. The programme lists a choice of two or three names against each child character but with no photos so I’m afraid I don’t know which particular actors we saw in our performance. Suffice to say they were all excellent. I do think they were probably considerably older than the children they were playing – especially the character of seven-year-old Marta who seemed very mature – but they never put a foot or a vocal chord wrong throughout. You’re not meant to have favourites with kids, but little Gretl was outstandingly cute, and Kurt was impishly decent in his dancing with Maria. Their So Long Farewell was definitely a highlight of the show.

All in all, a superb production that looked and sounded absolutely great throughout. A very fitting send-off for Paul Kerryson, and a tribute to the wonderful theatre that he has steered artistically over the past few years. We all loved the show, and have been singing the songs with irritating regularity ever since!

Review – To Kill A Mockingbird, Curve Theatre, Leicester, 18th October 2014

Posted on by

I was not one of those children who, willingly or otherwise, read To Kill A Mockingbird whilst at school. I’d heard of it, of course, and knew friends who had read it; but it was never part of my literature syllabus and, at that age, for my reading leisure, if it wasn’t a whodunit or a play I wasn’t interested. Unlike Mrs Chrisparkle, who read the book willingly at a tender age and impressed her schoolteachers with her as yet never before seen keenness.I’m not sure those teachers ever got a second chance to be impressed, so I hope they appreciated the experience. For years Mrs C had been on at me to read it, and for years I said yes I must, placing it in the “pending without intention” desk tray in my brain. But then one day, not that long ago, I relented, and discovered for myself what a gripping and emotional read it is.

The last time we saw cast members reading from an eponymous book on stage was in Gatz, the experimental reading/acting production of the Great Gatsby that takes an entire day to achieve. I loved its riskiness, its innovative approach, its willingness to turn established art forms on their heads; as you know, gentle reader, I much prefer a creative, experimental failure to a lazy success. But, in the final analysis, Gatz was quite boring really, and proved that a book is a book and a play is a play. So when the ensemble for To Kill A Mockingbird emerged from the Leicester Curve stalls, clambered up onto the stage and portentously raised and lowered their paperback copies of the book (each one a different edition,which is a nice touch), I had a slight feeling of foreboding. However, there was no need for alarm. They don’t read the entire book, they take it in turns to read individual passages, so that you get a dozen different voices (male and female) each speaking as though they were Scout, the six year old narrator of this story of growing up set against the injustice of racial discrimination in 1960s Alabama. Each passage will introduce an acted scene, so it becomes an alternating sequence of acting and reading, which keeps it feeling very fresh.

It wasn’t long into the play when the relatively well-to-do matinee audience at the Curve gasped audibly as Scout used the “n” word in her conversation. The “n” word appears quite a few times actually, in this 1970 adaptation of the book by Christopher Sergel. I’m not sure how you could express the discrimination of the time without using it, but it is interesting to reflect that there hasn’t been a drive to modernise some of the language for the 2014 audience. But there you are, you have been warned.

I’m sure you know the story – and if you don’t, and intend to see the play, then why should I spoil it for you? Suffice to know that Scout and Jem are the children of Atticus Finch, lawyer, and they and their friend Dill play, run errands, make discoveries and do all the things that kids do in their neighbourhood, as they learn from first-hand experience what separates right from wrong. Atticus’ watchword is equality, and he encourages the children to think the same way.He proves his sense of equality by becoming the Defence Lawyer for black farmworker Tom Robinson in his trial for raping the white woman Mayella Ewell, a decision that doesn’t go down too well in some sectors of Maycomb County. The trial is a cathartic moment for the community as a whole, for the protagonists in the case, and for Atticus’ family and friends. Scout, Jem and Dill get to see their community through different eyes as they start to leave their childhood behind. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy . . . but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

This lucid, eloquent production was originally produced by the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. By using a set that resembles a garden, with chalk lines drawn on the floor to demarcate the various areas of the town, this transfer brings the outside indoors with remarkable ease and effectiveness. Those members of the ensemble who are not in any particular scene sit at the sides of the stage following the action in their paperbacks. The whole impression is one of breathing dramatic life into the written word, whilst still having absolute respect for its original format.

There are three young actors each playing the roles of Scout, Jem and Dill at different performances. Obviously I can only speak for the ones we saw, but they were amazing. Arthur Franks’ Jem has all the confidence of the older sibling, and therefore further to fall when Atticus corrects his behaviour; and his idealistic expectation of what the jury will decide, as well as his overall view on life is heart-warming to see. Connor Brundish gives a terrifically impish performance as the socially advanced yet often unsure Dill, bringing out the comic elements of the role very effectively. But Ava Potter’s Scout is a performance of true delight; remarkably assured, full of attitude, very funny, very moving – quite brilliant. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a child actor receive a standing ovation before.

Daniel Betts as Atticus is the only adult performer to retain his own role throughout and not be part of the ensemble, and it works very well as a device to set him apart from the rest of the community, and make him more of a loner. He looks and behaves just like how you would imagine Atticus to be; kindly, wise, learned, and authoritative but with humility. It’s a great performance. The rest of the ensemble work really well together but each actor also brings terrific insight and identity to their own minor characters. David Carlyle was superb as the Prosecuting Lawyer, Mr Gilmer; slightly foppish, posing with hiscigarette, bringing an effeteness to the otherwise unsophisticated Maycomb County. There was no doubting his belligerence towards the helpless Tom Robinson, played with simplicity and great emotion by Zackary Momoh. There’s no way he would have had the physical dexterity to carry out that attack. Susan Lawson-Reynolds brought huge heart to the character of Calpurnia, helping Atticus instil decency and discipline in the children, whilst still retaining her sense of fun. Natalie Grady was a wonderfully straight-talking no-nonsenseMiss Maudie, Geoff Aymer a very kindly but splendidly ineffectual Reverend Sykes, Ryan Pope a despicably low-life Bob Ewell, and Victoria Bewick a memorably tormented Mayella, lashing out using attack as her best form of defence. But each member of the ensemble made a great contribution to the overall atmosphere of community life and clarity of narration; and Phil King punctuated the proceedings with some very enjoyable and wistful incidental music.

This is an excellent production that brought a tear to Mrs C’s eye (not mine, I must be more hard-hearted) and really tells the story well. It works as a play in its own right, but I have to admit, primarily it made me want to go back and read the book again. This production is in the early stages of a very lengthy tour that goes right round to next summer, visiting Cardiff, High Wycombe, Cambridge, Birmingham, Bath, Sheffield, Chichester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Nottingham, Dartford, Milton Keynes, Southampton, Leeds, Plymouth, Newcastle, Cheltenham, Richmond and Salford before ending up at the Barbican next July. I told you it was an intensive tour! An accomplished production suitable for all the family but that pulls no punches and tells it how it is. I predict very good business for these theatres, so get booking now!

Review – Kevin Dewsbury, Out Now, Dave’s Comedy Festival, Belmont Hotel Leicester, 20th February 2014

Posted on by

Let me take you back 35 years gentle reader – there is a reason for this, please have patience. In my second year as a student at that all-hallowed Oxford University place what I attended, there was an International Festival of the Arts held at all sorts of teeny little venues scattered round the town – a kind of #oxfringe I suppose. One of the acts in particular attracted the attention of one of my friends, because they were both from the same neck of the woods: in the middle of nowhere in deepest darkest Minnesota. So he, another American friend from Kentucky, an English mate and me all decided to go and see this guy do his stand-up comedy routine. His name was (still is, I believe) Allen Brookins-Brown. It’s a name unlikely to mean anything to you, but he was an absolute hoot. We’d already had a few drinks by the time the show started, so we were more than ready to have some fun. Totally surreal, fantastic comic timing and we laughed our heads off all evening. The slightly embarrassing thing was that the four of us made up 50% of the entire audience. After the show was over, my Minnesotan friend approached him and said we had all enjoyed the show enormously and we would be honoured (I suppose that would have been “honored”) if we could take him out for a drink. Thus it was that we spent another hour or two in the company of this hilarious man, getting steadily drunker and drunker, and indeed I believe my Minnesotan friend and he are still in contact to this day. No mean achievement that, when you remember that the worldwide web wasn’t even a glint in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye at that stage, so all done without the aid of social media.

Why am I telling you all this? Because last Thursday we had the pleasure of seeing Kevin Dewsbury’s Out Now show, on its penultimate airing before he wraps it in tissue paper and consigns it to the bottom of a spare-room drawer. And, sadly, the audience was very small. Bigger than the eight of us who saw A B-B, but not that much more. It’s a huge shame because, no matter how clever the material or how gifted the comedian, there is inevitably a lack of atmosphere with so small a house, and audience members become much more self-conscious. Should I laugh here? Did I laugh too loud? Should I laugh louder to show my support? Am I the only one laughing? Am I the only one not laughing? Then you start thinking about what the performer is thinking about you. With so few people in the audience, there’s no hiding place. And so it can go on. Mind you, it’s worse if you see a play as part of a very small audience; that can be really embarrassing. About fifteen years ago Mrs Chrisparkle and I saw a revival of There’s a Girl in my Soup at the New Theatre Oxford – it had been one of the first plays I’d seen in London when I was a kid so I’d always wanted to see it again – but there were only about 25 of us in this massive theatre, which made it one of the weirdest (and not in a good way) theatrical experiences ever. Fortunately with a show as enjoyable as Out Now that self-consciousness takes a very back seat.

Anyway I digress (as I often do). We’ve seen Kevin Dewsbury a couple of times at the Screaming Blue Murder nights in Northampton when he has acted as stand-in compere, and whenever you see him you know you’re in absolutely safe hands. I’ve always really enjoyed his relaxed, thoughtful style of comedy, and I have been looking forward to seeing him perform his own act, rather than compering, for a couple of years now. He’d created Out Now for the Edinburgh festival last summer where it received some very favourable reviews, so I was pleased to discover he was bringing the show down to Leicester as part of the Dave’s Comedy Festival.

You’re welcomed into the gig to the sound of Tom Robinson singing “Glad to be Gay”, which I haven’t heard for decades. I was impressed by its bittersweet lyrics and its walloping sense of irony. One of the many things for which that song is responsible was a society at London University when I was doing my postgrad called “Glad to be Green”; which was ostensibly a group of people who cared for the environment but was actually an excuse for a fortnightly organised pub crawl the length of the Mile End Road.

I’m digressing yet again. Out Now is a highly autobiographical account of Mr Dewsbury’s life as a “blokey gay” man (his words), the manner in which he came out, and his battles with mental illness that were all tied up with his internal angst that beset him up till about five years ago. I was really struck by the personal nature of this show. When a comedian comes on stage and does a standard set about his mother-in-law, his wife, his kids, his parents, his sex life, his childhood, etc, etc and etc, unless you actually know this person, you’ve got no idea whatsoever whether it’s completely true, pure fantasy or somewhere in between. My guess is that the germ of an idea probably comes from the truth but then gets embellished and ironed out to such an extent that it simply becomes an act rather than a confessional. But with Kevin Dewsbury you believe every word he says is true, which creates a real bond between the audience and the performer.

He talks about gay life in general – the terminologies that straight people normally don’t get to hear, who takes what role in the love making department, what happens in gay venues, and life with Grindr (which is apparently now compulsory). He also takes a mock- (at least I think it’s mock) pop at straight men’s “respect” for women; and points out the innate sexism in the fact that the straight version of the aforementioned “who’s nearby and wants sex” app is Blendr, which name subtly envisages the woman making smoothies or hummus when she’s not putting out. Mind you, five years ago I would have thought Grindr was a kitchen tool for preparing peppercorns.

Mrs C and I are lucky enough to have loads of fantastic gay friends, primarily (but not exclusively) due to our socialising in the Eurovision fan scene. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that some of our best friends are heterosexual. So I’m not sure if there could have been anything that Mr Dewsbury could have said that would have shocked or surprised us, but I can certainly think of some people who would have wriggled uncomfortably in their seats at this hour of gay agenda material that would probably have had him banged up at Her Majesty’s pleasure under the late unlamented Section 28. Naturally, his attitude to his subject is both personal and respectful, yet he scatterbombs his routine with little, old-fashioned, not-entirely-gay-friendly observations as a kind of contrapuntal leitmotif (pretentious, moi?) which emphasises the change of attitudes prevalent since the Bernard Manning years. It also acts as a rather nice reductio ad absurdam (I am getting carried away) – for example when a serious, thoughtful and politically correct observation ends up being a bumming joke. This is all interspersed with some entertaining comedy songs and the surprising realisation that he’s actually quite a good singer.

It ought to be hard to make mental illness funny without being dismissive or callous about it, but Mr Dewsbury has it down to a fine art – rather like Ruby Wax in Losing It, you can really break down the stigmatising barriers with mental illness if, as a sufferer, you simply but eloquently express precisely the thoughts that are going through your mind. Mr Dewsbury’s psychosis meant that all of his senses were extraordinarily heightened so that just the presence of a banana in his room meant that it took on huge significance for him – its smell, and indeed its shape, getting way too big for its boots. We never did find out if he ate it. Combining his very open account of his mental health issues with jokes about penises brings us back to those ironic “Glad to be Gay” lyrics. The overwhelming feeling at the end of the gig is that without question it is a funny show, but also a rather moving insight into a disturbed mind that’s fortunately no longer disturbed. A very honest and frank evening’s entertainment, and I can’t wait to see what new material he’s going to come up with!

Review – Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, Curve Theatre, Leicester, 9th November 2013

Posted on by

It’s incredible to think it, but it is now 18 years since Matthew Bourne’s original production of his sensational revitalisation of Swan Lake first hit our stages. At the age of 18, it’s now come of age. It can vote, get married and go to war. By definition then, it can no longer be an enfant terrible, more a pillar of the community. But even if the audience knows full well what to expect, each performance is an assault on the senses. You still get those frissons of witnessing the avant-garde, being challenged by the sight of an all-male troupe of swans, observing the veiled (or not so veiled) hints of homoeroticism, gratefully appreciating the first act humour, powerlessly suffering the desperate tragedy of the final act.

This is one of those shows that we always see every time it comes around, and this was probably our ninth or tenth visit. We last saw it three years ago and appreciated then that there had been a few minor changes to keep it moving and contemporary. Today there are more changes; nothing drastic, just a few embellishments and emphasis changes, and some re-shaped choreography in Acts Three and Four. These make the swans more menacing as a group (although perhaps less menacing individually), and make the Prince even more tortured. This may well be due also to the amazing performance ofSam Archer as the Prince, who actually played the Prince when we saw it in 2010 but who I think has now really got into the role in a much greater depth. I found Act Four more moving than usual and I admit I had to brush away a tear when the Prince finally collapses dead on the bed (sorry if I’ve ruined the ending for you). One of the swans (Tom Cummings maybe – a little hard to tell without a full cast list) picked up the dying Prince and held him in his arms in mockery of the Act Two position that the Prince had adopted when he was being entranced by the Swan. It was a stunning visual image.

Some other subtle changes include having recognisable celebrities in the Act Two bar scene – it always did include the thick-set tweedy woman who visibly warmed to the charms of the younger girls – but I see she is now characterised as June Buckridge (from Frank Marcus’ Killing of Sister George). We now also have the appearances of Quentin Crisp and Joe Orton turning up too, so I think it’s fair to say that bar has become a little more metrosexual (at least) in its nature. The girlfriend character is now even more badly behaved during the gala ballet scene – in addition to all the little transgressions she used to do she now beats out therhythm of the music like a tattoo on the front ledge of the box, to the disgust, naturally, of the Queen. The choreography for the Act Three waltz seems to have become even more lascivious, with a lot of appropriately raunchy hip-swivelling, which made it all the more entertaining as a result. However, Mrs Chrisparkle thought the end to the third act looked a little messier in comparison with previous performances. Perhaps clarity of storytelling got sacrificed for the whirlwind of activity that takes place in those final few very important seconds; she didn’t think that was quite up to scratch.

It’s still a sensational show though. Sam Archer is superb as the Prince (even though for me Scott Ambler remains the best) and for the performance we saw, his Swan was danced by Glenn Graham. I think that’s a lucky role for a cover to perform. Our first Swan was Will Kemp, understudying Adam Cooper I believe, and he was mesmeric. The Swan/Stranger role is one where you can absolutely show off and stun your audience. Mr Graham was enthrallingly brilliant. As the Swan he was so intense; his incredible ability to hold a fixed gaze really heightened the tension between him and the Prince. His dancing was immaculate too.As the Act Three Stranger, that same steely glare helps him dominate proceedings and I absolutely loved the way he led the Allegro Molto Vivace coda (that Tchaikovsky originally put in Act One) – full of brilliant attack with all the boys stage right lunging their way into the coquettish girls’ stage left area and back again; superbly entertaining.

In the performance we saw, the Queen was danced by Michela Meazza and she was superb. Sometimes the Queen can be a little static – so aloof and over-starchy that she barely moves. This Queen danced magnificently, whilst still bringing all the cruelty and horror of the unloving parent to the role and nicely enhancing the humour of her selecting escorts from the talent on offer. To be honest, if I may be so bold, and if you would kindly forgive my directness, gentle reader, she’s the original QUILF. Anjali Mehra played the Girlfriend with huge enthusiasm and a great sense of fun; you got a sense that this girlfriend truly regretted her involvement in any underworld plot to discredit the Prince. From the ensemble, I really enjoyed the partnership of Chantelle Gotobed and Luke Jackson as the Italian Princess and escort – he the know-it-all but ineffectual celebrity, she the girlfriend from Hell, encouraging the Stranger to be as naughty with her as you could decently show on a Saturday matinee. But everyone put their heart and soul into the show and it was a fantastic performance.

It was a sell-out, so if you want to see it on its current tour, don’t hang about booking tickets, get them bought now! It’s touring through till May 2014 including trips to Belgium and Israel. Go on, you won’t regret it.

PS. The audience were disappointingly chatty; because the music is recorded, I wondered if that signalled to people that it’s perfectly ok to talk over it in a way that you wouldn’t if it was live. In case you were wondering, it isn’t.

PPS. I bumped into Messrs Harry Francis and Simon Hardwick, late of A Chorus Line, who are in Leicester rehearsing the Christmas show, Chicago. It was very nice finally to be able to say a quick hello to them. Mr Francis said he thought Chicago was going to be great (you heard it here first) – had I booked? I hadn’t then, but I have now!